A friend of ours, Grove, sent me two photos this week and a favor to ask.

The first photo was a man on a boat: green ball cap, red hoodie, a puffy green jacket with camo on the shoulders, grinning like he’d just landed something. The second was an elk hunt on a foggy clear-cut hillside. A young guy, a little boy and the boy’s dad, all in blaze orange, kneel around a bull elk. The man on the boat was supposed to be on that hillside too. Work got in the way.

Could I put him in the picture? Grove had already asked ChatGPT, and ChatGPT said no. Something about the dead animal.

My first instinct was not my finest. I asked Claude to help me write a prompt that would sneak past ChatGPT’s guardrails. Claude declined (politely, and a touch primly) and offered to do the edit itself instead. It cut the man out of the boat photo, tucked him behind the antlers and cooled his colors down to match the fog. A good effort, but not quite right.

So back to ChatGPT, this time with the elk masked out. Still no. Apparently it could smell the elk through the mask.

Third try. Claude had split the hunting photo into layers, so I handed ChatGPT only the people. No elk anywhere in the frame. Suddenly ChatGPT was delighted to help. It drew the missing man crouched beside the boy and his dad, one hand on the boy’s shoulder. I took that group back to Claude, which set them on the hillside behind the elk and patched an antler where the dad’s hand used to be. Four people, one elk, one finished family photo.

I sent it back to Grove. He wrote back almost right away. Everyone on that hillside is wearing blaze orange except the new guy. A red hoodie and a green jacket are perfectly fine on a boat. In the woods during elk season, they’re how you get mistaken for something with antlers. (Washington requires hunter orange for a reason.)

So Grove took the finished photo, elk and all, the exact photo ChatGPT had refused to make, and asked ChatGPT to put a safety vest on him.

It did. No hesitation, no lecture. It even reported back, cheerfully, that it had added the vest while “keeping the rest of the hunting photo intact.”

The rest of the hunting photo. It knew. It looked right at the elk, called it a hunting photo, and got on with the tailoring.

Let’s review.

ChatGPT would not put a man in a photo with an elk. It would not put a man in a photo with a masked elk. It would put a man in a photo with no elk at all. And once somebody else had done the part it found distasteful, it was happy to dress him for the occasion.

The elk never changed. The man never changed. The final picture is exactly what Grove asked for in the first place. The only thing that changed was who did the part ChatGPT didn’t want its fingerprints on. If that’s a principle, it’s a flimsy one. It’s a bouncer who won’t let you in the front door but brings you a drink once you’ve climbed in through the bathroom window.

In fairness to the bouncer, Claude wouldn’t help me sneak past it either. But Claude’s line was in the same place at the end of the evening as at the beginning, which is more than I can say for the other guy.

Grove got his photo. Everyone’s in orange.

Safety first.